In case it wasn’t clear from looking at CoinGecko or your Blockfolio app every five minutes, the Bank of England (BoE) has confirmed in its new Financial Stability Report that crypto is volatile and the market is bearish.

The central bank released its bi-annual report on Tuesday, citing “market intelligence” as a primary source of research. Here are some of its key takeaways related to crypto:

• Assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum experienced sharp appreciation in value over a 12-month period till April 2021.

• Rapid crypto asset valuation spikes and increased trading activity in 2021 could highlight “potential pockets of exuberance”.

• Since May, the price of Bitcoin has fallen by about 50% and “remains particularly volatile” with prices skewed downwards.

• Crypto assets are largely held by retail investors for the moment, and “spillovers” from the crypto market into wider financial markets remain limited.

• Although institutional interest in crypto assets is growing and it’s a bit of a concern.

• But… actually, not that much of a concern. Or is it? Hmm, maybe it just needs monitoring for now. Right, job done. Put the kettle on would you?

“From an institutional point of view,” explained BoE Governor Andrew Bailey, “the evidence does not point to it [crypto] being a large part of the picture, but we clearly have to watch it very carefully, as we do, because it is a fast changing landscape.”

 

Binance blocks UK customers from fiat off-ramping. Again

It seems that leading global crypto exchange Binance has been forced to suspend fiat currency withdrawals for its British customers, and not for the first time.

As reported by London’s Financial News, payments network Faster Payments has ended its UK-based agreement with Binance. This means that, at the time of writing, affected British Binance users can’t currently “cash out” their crypto directly from the exchange.

Faster Payments originally suspended its service at the end of June, preventing customers from making both deposits and withdrawals to the exchange, but reactivated it a day later.

The uncertain moves at the time came after the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority stipulated Binance was not permitted to undertake regulated activities in the country.

The crypto exchange giant has been under the hammer in the UK recently, having also lost a partnership with another British payment tech company, Clear Junction, and being blocked for customer payments by major banks Barclays and Santander in the past week.

Apart from the UK, financial regulators in Poland, Japan and Canadian province Ontario all have Binance firmly in their sights for potential restrictive measures.

Binance is yet to provide any comment or clarification on the UK payments suspension. Although, the company’s hoodie-loving CEO, ‘CZ’, has been seemingly taking the regulatory pressure in his stride, recently commenting via Twitter: ‘Compliance is a journey’.